It is standard practice to plate a strand, which term can cover a compact-section element such as a wire or a noncompact-section element such as a tube or sheet, with a metal by passing the strand through a bath of the molten plating metal. A layer of the plating metal sticks to the strand and hardens thereon.
Such a procedure can be done with a workpiece constituted of a pure metal such as steel or copper, of an alloy such as brass, or even on a nonmetallic strand such as graphite, glass, or the like, so long as the molten metal sticks to the workpiece strand. The plating metal can be a pure metal such as copper, zinc, aluminum, chromium, lead, or tin, or can be an alloy. A standard such process is the galvanizing of wire, in which a rustable ferrous wire is covered with zinc. It is also possible for such a procedure to be used to build up a wire or strand of one metal by plating it with the same metal so as to increase the cross section.
The main problem with such plating of a strand is the thickness of the plated layer formed. Minor changes in viscosity or local variations in surface tension can produce thick and/or thin spots. Obviously a good-quality product must be plated uniformly.